•Imagine a machine so small that it is imperceptible to the human eye.

•Imagine working machines with gears no bigger than a grain of pollen.

•Imagine these machines being batch fabricated tens of thousands at atime, at a cost of only a few pennies each.

•Imagine a realm where the world of design is turned upside down, and theseemingly impossible suddenly becomes easy–

a place where gravity andinertia are no longer important, but the effects of atomic forces andsurface science dominate.

Source: Sandia National Laboratories, IntelligentMicromachine

Initiative (www.mdl.sandia.gov/mcormachine)

9

MEMS THE ENGINE OF INNOVATION AND NEWECONOMIES

•“Thesemicromachines

have the potential to revolutionize the world theway integrated circuits did”.

Linton Salmon, National Science Foundation

•“Micromachining technology has the potential to change the world insome very important ways, many of which are not possible to foresee atthis time, in the same way that standard IC technology has sorevolutionized our lives and economies”.

•Single-electron transistor (SET):Uses a single electron to indicate whetherit represents a 1 or a 0, thereby greatly reducing the energy required to runa processor and limiting the heat levels generated during operation.

•Quantum Computing:Unlike a conventional computer it uses quantummechanical properties of superposition & entanglement to performoperations on data & will rely on probability (in effect, “it is highly likelythat the answer is….”). The QC will run in parallel, performing manyoperations at once.

●Electromagnetic devices operate by passing an electric current through a wire.

●

Works extremely well in large scale but fails in the small scale (limitsminiaturization). Like water flowing through a pipe, as wire diameter decreases,so does amount of current flowing through it, limiting the ability to create andcontrol electromagnetic energy.

The NSF-funded multimillion-dollar program, based on a new approach toelectronics, could lead to tiny devices once considered fantasy

20

●TANMS seeks to solve this problem by taking advantage ofmultiferroic

{1}materials, which use electric fields to intrinsically switch the magnetic state of amaterial, similar to switching a light bulb on and off.

●The grant, worth up to $35 million over 10 years, will fund a new centerheadquartered at UCLA's School of Engineering & Applied Science.

●

Research aimed at developing highly efficient and powerful electromagneticsystems roughly the size of a biological cell—

systems that can power a range ofdevices, from miniaturized consumer electronics and technologies important fornational security to as-yet unimagined machines, likenanoscale

submarines thatcan navigate through the human blood stream.

"TANMS could spur a true paradigm shift for new devices that were oncethought of as science fiction but now appear just over the horizon," Vijay K.Dhir, dean of UCLA Engineering.

{1}Multiferroics

have been defined as materials that exhibit more than oneprimaryferroic